Imagine chefs, cooks, and restaurateurs posting their visually stunning, signature dishes and plating styles online, sharing their culinary creations with the world. These chefs, each who love their craft, hope to inspire others, gain recognition, or attract loyal customers.
Fascinated by food, a group of engineers create a program capable of generating new recipes and dish presentations.
In order to build the program, they collect millions of publicly available images of these dishes (signature presentations, unique plating, creative culinary works) without asking the chefs' permission.
The program learns patterns from the collected data, analyzing how ingredients are combined, dishes are plated, and culinary techniques are applied.
But, the program doesn’t solely rely on recipes and pictures directly from chefs.
For the program to be effective, it must learn a massive amount of adjacent information, such as historical food practices, outdated or modern health trends, and even cultural influences on plating and dining.
This allows the program to incorporate a wide range of contextually relevant knowledge, blending current culinary trends with historical insights about food.
By the time the training is done, recipes and images from chefs account for 10-20% of everything the program has learned.
Guided by the user's taste, imagination, and own personal knowledge, the program can now help users explore incredible “fusion” dishes based on the user’s inputs, the knowledge it has acquired, and the various ingredients introduced.
While the new dishes are unique creations, it's possible some similarities may appear in some dishes, reflecting elements from the original info it was trained on.
In the food biz, all recipes are adaptations or modifications of those who contributed before us.
Users can input specific preferences, instructions, and ingredients, guiding the output and adding their own creativity to the generated dish.
Using the program, users can explore their imagination with potentially limitless resources. Users can incorporate personal interests, interests of others, and an even avoid things like potential allergens.
Users can dive into parts of their culture they never had access to, and can use the tool to push the limits of their own imagination.
The tech company then offers the program to restaurants, aspiring chefs, kids, and individuals with mental and physical disabilities as a creative and exploratory tool.
Some users use it to generate and sell new dishes.
After some time, the program becomes very powerful. With the mastery of some users, it produces remarkably good recipes.
Many are able to generate impressive new dishes with ease, combining both the program’s knowledge and their own inputs, leading to widespread adoption in restaurants and kitchens.
As the program’s influence grows, many professional chefs begin to express concerns. They feel that their original creative expressions, reflected in their signature dish presentations, have been used without their consent or compensation.
Some chefs are frustrated, believing their work has been exploited, and that their contributions are being overshadowed by users of the program.
For some chefs, their sense of identity as creators is being diluted, as the program churns out endless variations of dishes inspired, in part, by their work. They argue that their once-unique culinary signatures are losing their distinctiveness in the market.
Some chefs even refer to the recipes generated by the program as “slop” and “not real food.”
Others fear a loss of status. They worry that the exclusivity of their craft is being undermined, as the program makes it easier for “just anyone” to replicate high-quality, creative dishes. The margin between "short-order cooks" and "skilled professionals" seems to be narrowing in their eyes.
The group of chefs is essentially split.
Some chefs directly attack users of the program with vitriol and hatred online. Some chefs send death threats and requests for self-harm or suicide towards users of the program.
Other chefs look beyond the perceived direct threat, and instead see the benefit to the craft and industry as a whole. More food, and more unique recipes, and more representation of voices and cultures certainly can't be a bad thing right?
Yet other chefs feel slighted. They disagree with the idea of a “democratization of food.” They believe their work has been stolen, and as they watch others benefit, they feel left behind. These chefs call for legal action. They want compensation. They want recognition. They want money.
While the tech company acted within the law by scraping publicly available content or procuring data from third-party sources—a common practice at the time—the chefs remain uneasy. They believe their work was or should have been protected. They feel the legal framework doesn't fully address ethical concerns surrounding the use of their creations.
This creates multiple divides. There is division among chefs, as well as between chefs and those utilizing the program.
This division is unfriendly.
It becomes so contentious, in fact, that many non-foodies begin to grow weary of food discourse altogether. They're sick of hearing about it. In fact, they’re more inclined to buy the processed, cheap food at Walmart rather than be drawn into the controversy.
Many people are baffled that food, of all things, has come to dominate the airwaves of social media. Isn’t there something more important to talk about?
Surely, there must be a resolution or agreement that can be made.
The sad part is that in this debate, the true colors of many people become evident. It becomes apparent that some chefs didn’t truly care about the craft of cooking on a grand scale—they cared about getting paid for it.
This makes some chefs appear superficial in the eyes of the public.
Meanwhile, on the other side, some opportunistic individuals use the program for personal gain, even when their contribution was minimal. They benefit from a system that rewards good capitalists and opportunists, regardless of their actual culinary skills or dedication to the craft.
As the food saga raged on, the divide between the “real chefs” and the users of the program deepened.
Legal battles were launched, public opinion swung back and forth, and both sides dug in their heels. The chefs who sought legal action believed they were standing up for their craft and the integrity of their creations.
The users and tech enthusiasts argued they were simply exploring new tools, expanding creativity, and democratizing access to innovation.
Only one truth was abundantly clear: no one could fully escape the consequences of the technological shift.
Some chefs adapted, finding ways to incorporate the program into their kitchens without losing their personal touch. Others held fast to tradition, doubling down on their handcrafted methods, carving out niches for authenticity in a world now saturated with endless options.
The public, meanwhile, continued to consume the food—the handcrafted dishes, the program-generated creations, and everything in between. And while the debates around ownership, creativity, and ethics persisted, life went on.
Why?
Because food is universal and a fundamental part of human existence. People are going to buy and consume what they like, and often will avoid the things they don’t like. “Some people live to eat, and some people eat to live.”
For the few people in the middle who were genuinely interested in advancing knowledge and discovering answers, one nagging question remained:
Was the true value of creativity in the act of creating food itself, or in whatever profit might be achieved?
In the end, the answer wasn’t clear. Perhaps it never would be.
